The Agency That Learned to Make Boring Things Personal

There are businesses people enjoy discussing at dinner, and then there are commercial recycling systems. Mulberry Marketing Communications has spent three decades on the second kind. Its portfolio includes protective gloves, floor-care machines, hydraulic valves, paper products, warehouse software and the people who keep public restrooms clean. This sounds like an eccentric handicap until you see the opportunity: nobody has done the easy storytelling for you.

The agency was founded in London in 1995 by Chris Klopper, who named it after the mulberries he sold door to door as a boy. At first, Mulberry did public relations. Over time it added strategy, design, writing, social, digital platforms, lead generation, internal communications, events, podcasts and film. Today it operates from London, Chicago and Melbourne. Matt Serra, who joined in 2003 and founded the Chicago office, became CEO after Klopper died in 2018.

The boring category advantage

Mulberry's proposition is “we make business to business personal.” It risks sounding like the sort of sentence agencies print on a wall. The work makes it more specific. When Ansell wanted to sell protective equipment to self-employed tradespeople and microbusinesses, the problem was not the glove. It was a professional brand speaking in technical language to buyers browsing a hardware aisle. Mulberry helped create OPUS, a sub-brand built around recognizable tasks, clear packaging and ordinary words.

For Rubbermaid Commercial Products, the agency went beyond telling facilities managers that recycling mattered. It helped build an online audit that asked users about their operations, returned a personalized report with recommendations and potential savings, and sent the resulting data into Salesforce. More than 15,000 audits were completed. Mulberry says the leads contributed to wins with DPD, RHP, BMW and Amazon.

This is the difference between content that decorates a campaign and content that performs a small act of service. The audit gave the audience a diagnosis. The diagnosis gave sales a reason to follow up. The same pattern appears in Love Recycling, a cross-European study of more than 1,000 businesses that produced benchmarking reports, a dedicated site, 500-plus downloads and more than 60 media placements. Reported reach exceeded 3 million.

“Ideas solve problems. Tactics support ideas.”Mulberry's strategy principle

Research is the press release before the press release

For Manhattan Associates, Mulberry surveyed 500 senior Australian shoppers. The finding was counter-fashionable: retailers obsessed with youth were overlooking baby boomers, a large and affluent group with distinct preferences around service, trust and stores. The research became more than 30 pieces of media coverage and a reported audience of 6 million.

For ecommerce accelerator Pattern, an annual Australian Marketplace Report turned platform traffic, shopping behavior and consumer sentiment into a recurring news engine. The campaign grew from 17 media clippings in 2023 to 22 in 2024 and 86 in 2025. The agency reports that the 2025 edition reached a readership of 65 million. Original research works here because it gives journalists evidence, executives an opinion worth expressing and prospects something useful to carry into a meeting.

There is a limit to this move. A survey with a tiny or distorted sample, a conclusion decided in advance, or no genuine news value merely produces expensive wallpaper. Mulberry's strongest examples work because the evidence reveals a useful tension: an ignored customer, a measurable gap, an industry behavior nobody had counted.

Three walls and no grand reveal

The most copyable part of Mulberry may be its creative process. Instead of disappearing after the brief and returning with a theatrical presentation, the agency lets the client into the middle. Raw words, images, moods and tones begin on the “cool wall.” Promising ideas move to the “warm wall,” where they acquire channels and campaign structure. The “hot wall” is the finished proposal, including creative, timing, channel strategy and budget.

It is a modest procedural change with a large effect. Feedback arrives before pride hardens around an answer. Stakeholders see why an idea survived. A buyer can copy it tomorrow with sticky notes and three review meetings. It will be less useful when every participant has veto power, when the brief contains no clear decision-maker, or when “collaboration” becomes a euphemism for endless revision. The walls need gates.

The price of fewer surprises

Mulberry does not publish its fees. It will share a rate card on request. More revealing is the machinery around the number: a schedule of work, a defined number of revisions, pre-agreed KPIs and a bespoke service-level agreement. Regular status reviews keep work moving; monthly planning combines results with tactical changes; broader reviews challenge the strategy.

The business model is the familiar agency blend of ongoing relationships and scoped projects, but continuity is part of the pitch. The Australian team reports an average client lifespan of eight years. Public testimonials describe relationships of a decade or more with Cintas, Manhattan Associates, Ferrero Foodservice and Dematic. That longevity lets a small agency accumulate a kind of category memory: it knows the editors, jargon, buying cycles and recurring anxieties of industries larger agencies may visit only briefly.

What changed when the media changed

PR came first. Then the internet turned every company into a publisher, social feeds demanded a daily visual metabolism, and internal audiences expected the polish once reserved for customers. Mulberry changed its mind about what an agency had to contain. Its moving-image team now ranges from animated social posts to full video series. Its digital work includes apps, microsites, ecommerce and interactive tools. Its writing extends from press releases to sustainability reports and employee communications.

Yet the newer services orbit the original skill: finding the interesting truth and placing it where the right person will notice. That puts Mulberry between a specialist PR consultancy and a large integrated network. An in-house team offers proximity; freelancers offer flexibility; a global network offers scale. Mulberry's answer is integrated production with specialist B2B knowledge and senior continuity across three regions.

The agency's own recent writing makes the philosophy unusually clear. It argues that B2B brands should stop trying to be everywhere, choose the places their audiences already trust and use AI to support content makers rather than replace their judgment. This is sensible advice from a firm whose best case studies begin not with volume, but attention: find the overlooked person, ask a question worth answering, then build something useful from the reply.